Young, Black and in Japan: A Search For a New Kind of Brotherhood

BANG a black American affords one a particular eyesight, an eyesight de veloped by the country of his origin. And more often than not, when one travels with this eyesight, he spends much of his time comparing his coun try with the one he visits. What he sometimes finds is a new vision.

The author, a sophomore at Manhat tan Community College in New York, spent much of last summer in Japan 49 days with the 24 other members of a:group.and 10 days alone with a Japa nese family. Following are some of his observations of that holiday.

From the airport to the customs area of Haneda Airport near Tokyo, the Japa nese photographers and reporters fall upon us with a strange insistency. Half moon smiles and lingering, expression less stares welcome us to Japan.

We, the staff and students of Forty Acres and A Mule (a Harlem community newspaper then subsidized by the Urban League, but now supported by various charitable organizations) and all constit uents of Brooklyn, Bronx and Harlem ghettos, have come to Japan believing that blacks share a common fraternal feeling with the Japanese. We are here to see what it was that allowed our Japanese brothers to achieve their re markable prosperity.

The Japanese watch me pick up my backpack and sling it awkwardly over my shoulder. They smile at me, the nervous brown giant. Everything seems calm and relaxed. The frustrations of America are 7,200 miles away. Reporters from several Japanese newspapers await us as we come through customs.

“Why did you come to Japan?” asks a writer in baggy black pants, a white shirt and wing‐tipped shoes.

“We came to see the people,” spokesman for our group replies. “We came to see the people who made Japan a great nation.”

The reporter smiles proudly.

“What do you expect to find?” he asks.

“People,”. I say, stepping forward, “the people.”

On the bus ride to Yoyogi Olympic Youth Hotel, where we are to stay, Tokyo, unlike other thriving metropo lises, seems to be asleep. Where are the people in perpetual motion, all eternally going, doing? Where are the cars and ttucks crowding the highways? The Japanese brothers and sisters appear to be hidden under straw hats and umbrel las, avoiding raindrops and us.

Even the student guides who accom pany us maintain a distance. It is strange, perhaps like walking in soundproof bubble on 42d Street, when all your efforts to reach out and com municate are useless. The reciprocal looks between people first meeting are merely momentary, automatic smiles that turn off after a moment of scrutiny.

Teaspoons of Misery Medicines

Breakfast the first morning is a sur prise: brown rice soup with a U.F.O. in it, and fish that tastes like cod‐liver oil. I am hardly able to eat it. Chomping down on the fish is like forcing down those unwanted teaspoons of misery medicine that my mother said would make me strong. Seeing most of the other students eating away, I manage, after deep thought, to do the same.

Touring the city, I notice many tem ples and shrines, but few people—only a sparse crowd here and there. And as conspicuous as we are, it appears that no one sees the group.

We leave Tokyo and head north by train. To escape the monotony of the six‐hour train ride, we tune in to Har lem's Apollo stage via a portable record‐player. We move to the beat of the Temptations and the Miracles.

The Japanese passengers laugh with us. They shake their heads, imitating our head movements, and somehow they feel a little of what we are feeling. The music sings to them as it does to us. The oneness is beautiful. But temporary.

We reach Sapporo. Then we go to Horobetsu, then to Hakodate. Moving fast, it is difficult to make new friends. Japanese are not outgoing people, al though they are very kind and friendly to strangers.

They keep a smile on their faces and you at a distance. Just as they say that “someone fights you with a long sword,” the Japanese comfort you with a long arm.

It is frustrating that you are not able to comfort them back. I find myself en gulfed by the abundance of kindness and love, but I cannot fully enjoy because I cannot give enough. I am in ept. All I can do is say “Thank you,” and walk away bewildered.

Climb Inside Their Heads

The world I know has never dealt with me in this way. At times, I want to climb inside their heads and see we have the same thing; maybe I should look inside my own instead.

I had come to Japan expecting the Japanese to be brother revolutionaries, but I learn that our battles are different. Japan is fighting for economic suprem acy; black America, for liberation. In the beginning, my mistake is in seeing the Japanese as a black people living under the same oppressive system as the American “Negro.” But, eventually, I have to accept the fact that I am not Asiatic, that our life‐styles are just different.

I had not considered that Japanese have their own country, black Ameri cans do not.

I had not considered that the Japa nese have a culture, black Americans do not.

I had not considered that the Japa nese have nearly always been free of built‐in racial conflicts, and black Americans have not. Our dissimilar past links us to different futures—and to battles on different fronts.

Whenever I meet a student who speaks English, as I did at a seminar in Nagano, he just cannot understand. The Japanese I talk to cannot relate to me in terms of common struggle.

It is hot and humid as I begin the part of the trip I have long looked for ward to: a prearranged, separate 10‐day live‐in with a Japanese family in Honjo.

The host family is waiting for me at the train station. Junji Sasaki, my host, stands five feet five inches, and his broad, angular face, with eyes showing a profound calm, lights up when we are introduced.

A revisitation of the expected brotherhood is strengthened by the kindness and love in Junji's home. Getting up in the morning, washing and eating do not have their usual element of hum drum. Walking_ for a distance in the rice fields, and sensing the strange oneness of land and people, I feel at total peace with myself.

It puzzles me. These people, who look so curiously, almost undetectably at me across the breakfast table, walk de lightedly to the store, some blocks away, if I even hint that I would like something. I am unable to deal with such kindness; it leads me to mistrust them. What is the angle? This is so far from “Fun City.”

Touring the town of Honjo with Junji, I am constantly jumping to the side, nearly falling into the open sewers, when a car passes. Junji walks ahead without so much as flinching; he knows that the drivers are careful and that, no matter how narrow the street, they will manage to get around you. (Not like New York City drivers, who seem not to see you when the light turns green.) Turning my head every two minutes, I look like a criminal.

His First Black Man

I think I am the only foreigner in Honjo. Junji tells me later that many of the people there have never seen blacks before and, in fact, that I am the first he himself has seen.

He smiles, and in a low‐pitched bari tone says, “You are a good man. Kind.”

Later; walking through town alone, notice fingers pointing at me from all directions. I do not mind being a spec tacle; the smiles are warm and inno cent, and that is agreeable. What the Japanese do not know is that the stranger in the gray poncho raincoat is pointing back at them and saying to himself, “What happy people.” They seem to possess something that people of the west search for relentlessly— peace.

Kaori, Mr. Sasaki's 3‐year‐old daugh ter, returns home from her grand mother's while I am eating lunch. Her eyes s‐t‐r‐e‐t‐c‐h as big as saucers when she sees me. It takes Kaori three days to decide whether or not I will bite.

Finally, after a good deal of serious thinking, she decides I am touchable. After that, it is impossible to satisfy her appetite for play.

Mr. Sasaki asks me to come to the high school where he teaches English and have English conversations with his students. As I walk through the classroom, all eyes follow me to my seat. I am not nervous, but interested in the questions the students will ask. They are all sitting motionless,’ silent.

Students Are Shy

Whomever my eyes fall upon raises his hand to his mouth, giggles and turns —as if to avoid my sight. They are shy, and I find this amusing. I have always felt that American high school students in general, and New York City high school students in particular, are more sophisticated about certain phases of life than their teachers. Their Japanese counterparts seem naive. The teachers are in control.

The students break into loud laugh ter. Toward the end of the talk, the students want to entertain me by sing ing “Oh, Susannah.” I tell them I would rather hear a Japanese song. While in Japan, I do not want to be reminded of the era that that American “stand ard” brings to mind. Obligingly, the students sing Japan's hit song, “Blue Light Yokohama.”

A five‐minute walk from Mr. Sasaki's house is a gym where, during the day, I sweat away breakfast and lunch by running on the basketball court. I be friend some Japanese high school stu dents who are participating in a summer program. They invite me to a club meeting. It is humorous to watch three people search frantically through dic tionaries just to be able to talk to me.

When I am ready to leave, they shower me with presents: books; pic tures, postcards and woodcarvings. I stand there speechless. I tell them I have no gifts to give them. One student says, “Your gift was giving us a chance to practice our English. We are grate ful.”

I leave them. As I walk the narrow streets of Honjo wondering whether or not I am dreaming, I ache with bewil derment and the effects of too much kindness.

Slowly, I begin to realize that there is a big chunk of life I have never seen. I hadn't known that people were treated the way I am now being treated. I am unable to get close to any Japanese, but they all manage to get close to me. They respond to me as a total man, not just parts of me; the experience of being totally alive is totally new to me.

It rains the last five days of the live in with Junji, but he and I manage to visit all his friends. At every stop there is something to eat, tea and a gift.

As the unwanted last day arrives, wonder where the other nine days have gone. It is a difficult good‐by, but manage without tears.

Hiroshima is our next stop, and am nervous about going. I feel that being called American makes me share some of the guilt that many Americans shrug off like a cold chill after a warm shower. The bomb dropped 25 years ago; I wonder how the people of Hiro shima will respond to me.

The first day there, the group is met arid guided around the city by a Protes tant Japanese minister, and at every opportunity he declares, “Your Gov ernment's bomb leveled the entire city. Your bomb polluted the waters surrounding the city.” Etc., etc., etc. (He does not know American history.)

He tells us his experience of the tragedy:

“I was in my yard when the bomb struck. I didn't know what had hap pened until days later. It was about 8:15 A.M. on Aug. 6. I saw a flash of white light and was flung against the wall of the garage.

When I gained consciousness, my wife had pulled me from under some wooden boards and was wiping my forehead. I had a fever. I left my house It was still intact—and raced toward the center of the city.

“People were running and screaming —some faceless, others with partly melted skin dripping from their hands. I ran toward my friend's house and stopped abruptly, seeing nothing but ashes where a three‐story brick house had been. I almost went into shock.”

Cold silence. No questions. We just listen.

“The whole city was in flames. Later, when the people began to clear the ashes, they found spots on cement steps where people had been sitting— that was all that was left of some of the missing.”

Later that same day, we visit the hospital where some of the surviving patients are still being kept and treated for fall‐out effects. As we walk across the waxed linoleum corridor, the pa tients stare at us from their beds. One man's entire body had been scorched; he has spent the last 25 years in the hospital.

Our next stop is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. We walk past the ticket holder, and a photograph draws my attention. It is a picture of crowded, makeshift health station.

The people are burned to the bone. Their flesh covers only parts of their bodies, like threadbare clothes. They are piled three in a bed; some are on the floor. There are more photographs. And more.

I leave the horror museum for fresh air. The steps from the museum seem coldly unfamiliar. Some of the 25‐year‐ old guilt worms its way into my mind. The once‐friendly Japanese faces appear to feign smiles that perhaps camouflage hate for me, an American by circum stance, not choice.

I want to talk to more people in Hiroshima. It is not easy to leave with out feeling sorry that the three days are not three years.

The last week in Japan is beautiful. Not until then, with the initial shock of a new country and culture having mel lowed into an even‐temnered dance be tween confusion and half‐understand ing, do I meet some students (at discotheque in Tokyo's Shinjuku area) who are on my wave length. From the conversation, I can tell they know inti macy with the street and its universal language.

More of That Brotherhood

It is in the discotheque—with the lights blinking at a speed that makes the Popcorn a slow‐motion ritual, with the rhythms communicating to all our souls—that I find more of that expected brotherhood.

In a nightclub called the Thunder bird, a group of teen‐agers encircle me and clap their hands. This is my cue to do my thing. No one there does the Popcorn better than I.

After the discotheque closes at 11 P.M., some young people invite me to a restaurant. They want to talk about the “black struggle” in America. I do not want to talk about America, I want to forget America. But I am obligated, and they must be told. For five hours, I talk and they listen.

At 3:30 in the morning my new friends are so depressed that one of the fellows says, with tears in his eyes, “We feel what you mean, brother.” They hail me a cab, and leave them.

The last day arrives with the usual prematurity of last days. Fifty‐nine days ago, I had walked through the customs area with the hope of a better understanding of our Japanese “broth ers.” I had worn an old pair of Ameri can glasses, glasses stained with tears from generations of unfulfilled Ameri can dreams; with the inhumanity that matter‐of‐factly pervades American so ciety, like the air breathed; with a repertory of the old generation's hang ups and perverted ideologies.

Coming back to the airport, it seems that in Japan, as alienated as I had felt at times, I have found something new, something that made me forget the significance of race the divid ing factor in America; something that changed my concention of myself and America. A new vision.

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A version of this archives appears in print on June 28, 1970, on Page 314 of the New York edition with the headline: Young, Black and in Japan: A Search For a New Kind of Brotherhood. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe